Based upon the novel by Tim Tharp
Screenplay Written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Webber
Directed by James Ponsoldt
**** (four stars)
DUCKIE: What am I not facing?
ANDIE: The future.
DUCKIE: Well...whether or not you face the future it happens, right?
-Written by John Hughes from "Pretty In Pink" (1986)
Are we doomed to live up to only our weakest and worst tendencies as well as our darkest and most destructive perceptions about ourselves? Or are we ever able to transcend our largest transgressions and weaknesses? Do we, or can we, ever truly evolve and if so, is it even worth trying?
As of this writing, I am sitting in my study on the eve of a new school year basking in the afterglow of Director James Ponsoldt's beautiful new film, "The Spectacular Now," a teenage love story/drama that sits superbly alongside Writer Bert V. Royal and Director Will Gluck's "Easy A" (2010) and Writer/Director Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" (2012), two excellent recent films about the teenage experience which had the sheer audacity to believe that teenage characters and audiences are worthy of stories and entertainment that are sensitive, superbly crafted, extremely well acted and as artful as any film made for adults. Ponsoldt has helmed a film that is as languid as a long summer's day and as tender as a teenager's broken heart as it explores the nature of beginnings, endings, the ever unfolding presence of the future and the tough questions of whether we are simply destined to live inside of a pre-conceived box or emerge into something new and perhaps an even better existence. "The Spectacular Now" very astutely offers no easy answers, allows its characters to ask the most difficult questions of themselves and provides us with a deeply felt emotional journey that carries a maturity and gracefulness that indeed puts most films to shame, films geared towards teenagers or otherwise. Take this latest Savage Cinema review as the annual "Back To School Edition" as we all take stock of where we have been ad where we may go as we all head into a new year.
Set in the Spring of a Georgia high school Senior Year, "The Spectacular Now" introduces us to the popular Sutter Keely (a terrific Miles Terrier), a most charming, friendly, life of the party who is breezing through his final year of high school with no veritable plans or destination in mind at all. He lives with his Mother (Jennifer Jason-Leigh), is estranged from his Father (a heartbreaking Kyle Chandler), carries and on and off again relationship with the pretty and equally popular Cassidy (Brie Larson), is an academic underachiever, works afterschool in a men's clothing store and is already nursing an increasingly dangerous addiction to alcohol as Sutter is rarely without his hidden flask or extra large spiked soda.
After yet another party and yet another drunken night drive back home, Sutter is awakened early the next morning by Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley in her warmest and best performance to date), a quiet, introverted classmate who finds Sutter unconscious upon the lawn across the street from her home. The twosome become friends, Aimee begins to tutor Sutter with Geometry, and slowly, Sutter and Aimee begin a tentative romance, a romance Sutter claims that he is uncommitted to and is certain will fail, despite how his feelings keep pushing him towards this girl, whose natural ease, subtle confidence, love of Science Fiction books and dreams of a future away from their Georgia town, continuously reveals an irresistible beauty to him, making him fall harder and deeper.
As graduation and the prospect of college approaches, Sutter is forced to come to terms with his cavalier, and thus fearful, attitude towards life beyond his teenage years and must face some hard choices of not only wondering if he is able to move forwards within his life but if he deserves to...and most notably, earn and keep the love of Aimee Finecky.
James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now," while containing a tremendous amount of inherent drama and urgency, is a film that never falls into histrionics, melodrama or any sense of pre-fabricated, calculated seriousness. This is a leisurely paced film, as well as one that is genuinely elegiac and disarmingly perceptive towards a specific time of life while also presenting the anxiety we all face with the inevitability of the future's arrival. This film emotionally took me back to the summer before I embarked onwards to college as well as placed me so firmly within any life stage when one chapter was closing as another simultaneously opened. "The Spectacular Now" chronicles the tumultuous stage in between for one boy, who is seemingly determined to reject the unfamiliar and therefore, the potential greatness of the unknown in favor of the familiarity of everything he is accustomed to, regardless of how self-destructive his behavior is and the ever growing realization that his special brand of charm can only last so long and that whether he wants it or not, time is indeed running out.
With a voice that is reminiscent of the late Christopher Penn, plus the swagger of a younger John Cusack and even a dash of Tim Matheson's quick witted cad from Director John Landis' "National Lampoon's Animal House' (1978), Miles Terrier delivers a star making and multi-layered performance as Sutter Keely. His friendliness feels authentic and is also infectious. His ability to charm, disarm and even see the greater potential in others while not being able to see it within himself provides the character with a painful dichotomy that is at times, difficult to watch, because we in the audience realize just how good of a person he actually is. While Sutter is a fast talking, fast moving, care free individual, we see throughout the film how his excessive drinking is used as if he is trying to outrun and frankly out drink his demons, a characteristic that makes him a close cousin to the character of the hedonistic Gary King in Director Edgar Wright's excellent "The World's End." Throughout, Miles Terrier never overplays even one moment, and always ensures that Sutter transcends the cliche of the "crying clown" by supplying true pathos alongside the requisite comedy.
Shailene Woodley is a wonder!! Now truth be told, I have not been entirely sold on Woodley mostly due to her starring role on the mercifully concluded and downright ridiculous teenage television...ahem...drama "The Secret Life Of the American Teenager." Even though she more than held her own alongside George Clooney in Director Alexander Payne's "The Descendants" (2011), I guess I still was not terribly convinced of the fullness of her abilities. Well, I have no more doubts as Woodley's performance is so effortless, so naturalistic, so beguiling, engaging, inviting, lovely and illuminating that she not only finds the depth and soul of the "nice girl," I really think that you will fall in love with her just as deeply as Sutter does. She truly epitomizes the girl of which boys may experience love at eighth sight and once that specialized brand of emotional lightning hits, that boy will kick himself profusely for not having noticed her brand of beauty sooner.
Together, Miles Terrier and Shailene Woodley as Sutter and Aimee, make for one of the most tenderly romantic couples I have had the pleasure to witness on screen. Their's is a romance I wanted to see succeed and I was thrilled to watch from its very inception as their chemistry is intoxicating. While I do not think that it will unseat the iconic romance as witnessed between Cusack and Ione Skye in Writer/Director Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything..." (1989), I do believe that this screen romance and the film overall sits proudly in the same neighborhood as the level of maturity, intelligence, choices and consequences the twosome face are of high quality and tremendous earnestness and fragility.
The fragile nature of the love story between Sutter and Aimee is deeply tested with the constant presence of alcohol, an element Ponsoldt never exploits for cheap drama. For Sutter, the alcohol represents such a crucial element in "The Spectacular Now" as it seemingly extends the "now" of Sutter's status as the life of the party. Even so, the film charts his slow awareness that he is not nearly as clever and sly as he thinks, and that it is difficult to remain the life of the party when the party has long abandons you. Furthermore, the film depicts the precarious stage when Sutter's choices could easily change him from being the life of the party to being yet another town drunk. The alcohol figures as a key element into the hows and whys his family has become so fractured while it also presents some dark foreshadowing to a potentially wayward, lonely future.
For Aimee, and especially as her relationship with Sutter grows (seemingly her very first relationship at that), alcohol is utilized as a source of bonding and connective tissue between them, the precarious glue to which Aimee will allow herself to indulge in order to remain in Sutter's embrace and affection. It is an element which even clouds or informs the fullness of their love story as Aimee certainly possesses unspoken fears losing Sutter by not imbibing, a decision which may unravel her own future.
And then, there is the nature of love itself, how we love and how can we love or be loved when we either do not love ourselves or feel unworthy of love. These are the major themes contained in the entirety of "The Spectacular Now" and again, I just marveled at the close and careful attention to the emotional details of human nature especially during this very difficult period of late adolescence when life decisions need to be made whether you are ready to make them or not.
Dear readers, we are truly living in a precarious time for the cinema when Hollywood is seemingly less and less interested in making films about people. Believe me, however much I love the spectacle, the flash, the power and the awe and WOW factor of some big budget releases, I will love movies about human beings just as much, if not even more. "The Spectacular Now" is just such a film that honors the human experience so completely that I am not able to urge you enough to go out and support a film that is this heartfelt and expertly delivered.
James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now" is easily one of the very best films I have seen this summer. Will it be one of my favorites of 2013? We'll have to just wait and see. Until then, why don't YOU head right out and see this film for yourselves.
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